The Reason People Hate LAST OF US 2 is Why it’s a Masterpiece

I swear okay hey everybody Welcome to screen Crush I'm Ryan Erie The Last of Us on HBO is a pretty near perfect adaptation and it has me looking forward to season two and get ready for a whole lot of Internet discourse because the last of us too was one of the most controversial video games ever made but I think that all the reasons that people hated the game are actually what make it great and to really understand what that game is trying to say I need you to ask yourself a question do you think you're Alexa or Siri or like whatever AI tool you use what's that got to do with Last of Us it has everything to do with the last of us but you don't have to answer right now we'll come back to that now I should note that when I say some people hated the game I'm talking about the story of the game on a purely technical level everyone agrees that this game is magnificent also a disclaimer my brother-in-law was a level designer on the last of us too and this is my cat in the pet store but I'm not going to be talking about the level design or the gameplay I wanted to revisit the story so spoilers ahead for the last of us too now I'm sure a lot of you know the story of the first last of this game but we have to understand the larger theme that drives that story now we have seen thousands of hours of zombie stories this point and yet The Last of Us feels fresh this is partly because of how people become infected instead of it being a virus or magic or aliens these humans have been infected with a parasitic fungus that is grown from the natural world most zombie stories are retellings of man versus Man the hordes of the undead can represent consumerism overpopulation or even just a fear of growing up but the last of us is a story that is man versus nature Oh you mean like that Anthony Hopkins movie where he fought a bear or when Liam Neeson punched a wolf take that wolf no oh I mean man vs nature like all of nature is taking over humanity and by extension it's taking over Joel's Soul we see this in three levels the macro the micro and personally on the macro level Nature has reclaimed the world from human beings our cities and great works are overgrown with plants that crack the foundations and topple buildings the last of a series even implies that the cordyceps fungus was able to adapt because of climate change what if for instance the world were to get slightly warmer Mother Nature has also overthrown mankind only cellular or the micro level the cordyceps fungus has infiltrated the human body and turned people into extensions of nature the zombies are like animals and human bodies all stimulus in response with no higher brain functions or you could say that the fungus robs Humanity of its soul and this is what we see happen to our characters on a personal level zombies are always stories about people losing their humanity and becoming soulless monsters and this happens to Joel in the opening of our story with the death of Sarah now we don't know what Joel was up to specifically over the next 20 years but we know that it wasn't good and you said everything right all the [ __ ] we did Joe did such bad things that his brother left him and went out west with the fireflies just like the fungus infects the brain Joel's heart had become infected with hatred the world's external battle with cordyceps mirrors Joel's internal struggle with grief and then he meets Ellie [Music] a few two days very slowly Ellie cures Joel's inhumanity and Ali is also the cure for all of humanity she is the key to restoring the human Race's dominance over nature she can bring back the human race she can restore the human soul but then and like Major Spoilers for Last of Us here then Joel finds out that for Ellie to save Humanity she has to die so Joel goes on a killing spree to save her life killing the only doctor that could create a vaccine against the fungus Joel chose to sacrifice the future of humanity just to preserve his own Humanity now it is an incredible ending for a video game because we're forced to play the game to see see how the story ends even though we may not agree with what Joel is doing The Last of Us forces us to walk in Joel's shoes and to see the world from his point of view when you play this game you don't want to win this is the feeling the second game would exploit forcing us to play out a story about people that we kind of hate it's like if the second half of Jaws was all from the shark's point of view actually that sounds awesome you're right that does sound awesome and so is the last of us too so let's talk about how that entire game was an exercise and empathy for any story to work we have to empathize with the character maybe because the characters a cute bird and a Pixar short or maybe because the main character is somebody we want to be like Joe is the anti-hero protagonist that deep down we all want to be he's rugged he's a badass he has a haunted past it's like they splice together the genes of Tony Soprano Don Draper and Rick Sanchez and then you get to play as him in a video game and this is where video games are a superior medium over most other forms of entertainment you get to actually be the protagonist every storytelling medium wants you to feel empathy with its characters books movies they all want you to see a piece of yourself and the protagonist this allows us to fuse our own sense of well-being with the characters in the story then the characters become an extension of ourselves it's why people were so turned off by Luke Skywalker doing this because we don't want to grow up to be an old hermit milk in a space cow so entertainment can cause you to extend yourself into a fictional person but using technology amplifies this extension of self because we already use tools to extend Who We Are Marshall mcluhan wrote about this at length using a car as a metaphor if you're in a car accident you don't say hey that guy's car hit my car you say that guy hit me exactly the car has become an extension of yourself and video games allow this theoretical extension of self to become literal when you're playing The Last of Us you are Joel even when kids in the 80s played Atari they would still hop around with the controllers because the little pixels on the screen became an extension of their own identities we become fused with these characters their success is literally our success we don't want Mario to die because we'd have to stop playing the game so the last of us too sets up a fairly straightforward Revenge story Abby the daughter of the doctor that Joel killed hunts him down for Revenge but first the game makes you like Abby you play as her and then she and Joe Escape zombies together before she realizes who he is I look like you heard of us or something because they have Abby keeps Joel alive just long enough for Ellie to show up and watch his murder and it is heartbreaking because Joel is a video game protagonist we kind of have the feeling that he can't die Mario Never Dies may not for real link is still saving the princess Mega Man still can't duck this medium has lulled us into complacency so Joel's death is shocking please get up and like Ellie we want revenge like you play this game actively to hunt Abby down and kill her for what she did to us I'm I mean what she did to Joel it's a perfect setup for Ellie's Revenge story she travels Across America tracks down Abby has to fight through zombies murders people kills dogs on stealth missions so she won't get detected right you play some sick game or you kill dogs yep no but look it's okay it's just video game dogs I mean we've been killing them since Metal Gear dude I've killed like thousands of humans in Grand Theft Auto alone all right me too proceed okay but see that's the thing about these dog dads we don't think much of killing the dogs because we have to kill Abby and the dogs are in our way and then rightly we finally have Abby the game stops and makes us play through these same few days as the person we hate now we are forced to extend our sense of self into a character that we hate and this I mean this is when I had to put down the game for a while I think a lot of other people did too as much as I wanted to find out how this story ended I did not want to be Abby but the game forced me to see the world through her point of view I learned about her life how her dad died learned that she was in love and most importantly I learned about her dog Alice or the puppy's name is Alice yes this is the same dog that you killed as Ellie earlier when you're Abby the game forces you to play with the dog to see her as a kind loyal animal and not a monster uh-huh that's what I'm saying right okay so and it just feels and people don't want to feel shitty when they play a video game we're used to video games being fun adventurous living your life vicariously through criminals who can do whatever they want other media like books TV and movies routinely tell stories that make us feel terrible like the kite Runners six feet under and life is beautiful all of them are downers and they're all brilliant and they all challenge how we see the world and this was the end goal of the last of us too the team at naughty dog wanted to use the medium of video games to tell a story in a way that could only be told through this technology and this is just the second act of the story in the third act Ellie has a shot at peace with her girlfriend and a baby but she's lost two of her fingers which means that she can't play the guitar like Joel could and remember Joel played the guitar to express how much he loved Ellie if I ever were to lose you I surely lose unlike Joel having someone to love is not enough to quiet the pain inside of her she has to hunt Abby down once again the two of them have this brutal fight in shallow water and it's awful you don't want either character to win you just want the fighting to stop and we are terrified that one of them is going to die this story is only possible in a video game where technology allows us to mentally become these two women I mean this is like if Super Mario Brothers 2 killed off Mario in the first level and then made people play as the princess are they Mario too you can play as the princess yeah you're right if the internet existed back then then Twitter would have called Mario too woke and that brings us to act three of this video and to the dark side of gaming the internet welcome to the internet have a look around earlier I mentioned how Marshall mcluhan talked about how people extend their sense of self with technology and the internet has made this extension literal people create avatars of themselves and inhabit a virtual space yeah that's me well that's my avatar now you have more freedom in this virtual world like in The Matrix or virtual reality and Jesus wept the internet has connected us through technology and in theory we're more connected with each other than we've ever been but in reality the internet has made us more disconnected Because the Internet robs us of human empathy it's Unthinkable that somebody would walk down the street just yelling racial slurs at people yet that is exactly what's happening thousands of times right now just in Call of Duty game chat listen buddy if you don't log off this game immediately I'm gonna fly over to your house come down to that basement you're hiding in rip off your arms and shove them up your butt now some people live vicariously through GTA characters shooting up places but other people live vicariously by being mean to other humans online and I'm not just talking about racist people I'm talking about how everybody on some level does this online everybody wants to nail a sick burn or shame somebody you've probably all had some online interaction that you would never have had in real life this is because technology creates a barrier between you and another human being look at social media read through the comments of this video people are mean because B mean is fun and we feel like it's okay to be mean to people on the internet because we're shielded by a barrier of Technology The Last of Us two's ending broke down this technological barrier that we have between ourselves and other people the game made you empathize with someone who could have been a two-dimensional villain and this is the true meaning of any video game it's never about what you do in the game it's about how it makes you feel if you enjoy hurting somebody in a game then your brain is enjoying the same feeling as if you're hurting somebody in real life it's just that we know it's okay because it's only a video game now a few TV shows have also challenged this idea Westworld was essentially a live-action video game the hosts are NPCs playing out stories and loops and the guests can maim and have their way with all of them but the guests in Westworld were still indulging their cruelty in their minds they were committing these atrocities even if it was consequence free or listen to how William explained the Westworld park it doesn't cater to your lowest self it reveals your deepest self and this is why I asked you if you thank your Alexa it's a program it has no feelings but your reaction to Alexa is real when you're grateful to her for telling you the weather that is a real human emotion that you are feeling you are what you put out into the world Marshall mcluhan also famously said that the medium is the message or what's that mean well in other words it's not just that you're watching TV it's how you watch TV are you alone on your phone with the other people in your jazz band all of that says something about yourself just like the way you play games matters the way you treat people on the internet matters now obviously The Last of Us is just a story and there's a huge difference between killing somebody in Grand Theft Auto or in real life The Last of Us Part One was a story about how the cordyceps fungus ended humanity and that fungus is a metaphor for Joel losing his soul but in the last of us too the villain isn't a fungus it's us Ellie and Abby are stealing away their own Humanity because they fail to see the humanity in each other but the last of us too does challenge us to think about the the outside world every story wants us to see a piece of ourselves and a character but the last of us too wants us to see a piece of ourselves and everybody out there in the real world because in our world of avatars and technological barriers we no longer recognize ourselves and others and then we stop recognizing ourselves like Joel We are in danger of losing our Humanity to a shocking infection that blinds us and transforms us into beasts that just want to consume and Destroy monsters that are blind to the humanity and others so we can't even recognize the humanity in ourselves foreign [Music]

Channel: ScreenCrush

Views: 169,813

Keywords: last of us 2 hated but great, lastr of us 2 hated but great, lastr of us 2 hated but gerat, lastr of us 2 hated, last of us 2 hated, last of us 2 hated but gerat, last of us video essay, last of us 2 explained, last of us gameplay, last of us ending, abbie, ellie, joel, last of us heavy spoilers, last of us new rockstars, hate last of us 2, last of us 2 review, ellie thumann, ellie goulding lights, last of us 2 hated by fans, the last of us part 2 hated, lasr of us

Id: n_uWAo8TEJI

Length: 14min 0sec (840 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 27 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/Sbat27]

Can’t do that. They have the next marvel thing to cover for the 100th time. In all seriousness they covered it during the game’s release when it was popular to talk about so don’t think they will anyway. Possibly when S2 comes out I guess. Would like more game coverages though even if it’s not a new game.

[u/Brehmstorm]

Dunkey, Just Write, and Cosmonaut's takes on this piece of shit were mind numbing enough.

[u/XRPHOENIX06]

I think people need a reminder on how awful this game was